Tribune Tower competition

Built in 1925, the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower was designed by New York architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, who won a contest held by Tribune co-publishers Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Patterson to create the newspaper's new HQ. It was named a Chicago landmark in 1989.

Blair KaminTribune staff reporter

Tribune Tower is the product of the most famous architecture competition of the 20th Century. On this date, the 75th anniversary of the Tribune, co-publishers Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Patterson announced a design contest for the newspaper's new quarters. In their words, it was to be "the world's most beautiful office building." They offered $100,000 in prize money.

The hype drew considerable skepticism. But then the entries came pouring in, 263 of them from 23 countries. Most relied heavily on the architecture of the past; others anticipated the austere forms of Bauhaus modernism. Some included billboards and radio towers meant to suggest that the building housed a newspaper. First prize of $50,000 went to New York architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, who designed a soaring Gothic skyscraper with a spectacular topside treatment.Completed in 1925, the tower rises 36 stories (460 feet) above North Michigan Avenue. Indiana limestone sheaths its steel frame. Structural piers shoot upward to the flying buttresses that form the tower's ornamental crown. Elaborate Gothic carvings adorn the top and bottom of the building, and fragments from more than 120 structures, including the Great Wall of China, are embedded in the base. Many of the pieces were gifts to McCormick; some were brought back to Chicago by foreign correspondents. The lobby is inscribed with patriotic passages and ringing defenses of press freedom. No American newspaper is more closely associated with the building that houses it.

Tribune Tower quickly became a major architectural and urban presence. Along with the neighboring Wrigley Building and the Jazz Age skyscrapers at 333 and 360 N. Michigan Ave., it dramatically frames the Michigan Avenue bridge, helping define one of the city's great urban spaces.